Third Doctor
The Third Doctor was the third incarnation of the Time Lord known as the Doctor. Throughout the majority of his life, this Doctor was stranded on Earth as part of his exile by the Time Lords, a fact that made him somewhat bitter at times.
This Doctor entered the service of UNIT, becoming their unpaid scientific advisor, and would remain in their service long after his exile was lifted. He stood out from his predecessors in his willingness to engage others physically, and cut a more dashing figure than them, as well.
In his first year with UNIT, he was assisted by Liz Shaw, whom he replaced as UNIT's scientific advisor. She assisted him in his research and experiments, but left after becoming resentful of the Doctor's knowledge overshadowing her own.
During his time out in the field as UNIT's advisor, the Doctor was aided by Sergeant Benton and Captain Mike Yates, and even the Brigadier himself. The Doctor hardly got along well with the Brig in the beginning, but became good friends, with an easy mutual trust between them.
The Doctor was given a new assistant, Jo Grant, bubblier and more air-headed than Liz. The Doctor found her a most useful companion in his adventures after his exile ended and was quite protective of her as she got in trouble easily. However, the Doctor lost his assistant when she parted from UNIT to marry Clifford Jones.
In his final year with UNIT, the Doctor was joined by inquisitive journalist Sarah Jane Smith. They went many places in time and space, even visiting Peladon again. He found her inquisitive skill quite useful in their travels, but more than often, he would have to save her.
The third Doctor was forced to regenerate after being exposed to large amounts of radiation during his efforts to stop the Eight Legs of Metebelis III.
Biography
Regeneration and exile
Following the struggle with the War Lords and the War Chief, (DW: The War Games) the Second Doctor was sentenced by the Time Lords to a forced regeneration and exile on Earth. To enforce this ruling, the Doctor's knowledge of TARDIS operation was blocked. Upon his regeneration's finalisation, the Doctor collapsed outside his TARDIS, on Earth, near a UNIT patrol. He was brought to a hospital in a coma.
At the time of the Doctor's arrival, a swarm of power units for a non-physical alien intelligence known as the Nestene Consciousness was uncovered. Normally disembodied, it had an affinity for plastic and was able to animate humanoid facsimiles known as Autons. The Nestene Consciousness took over a toy factory in London, and planned to replace key government and public figures with Auton duplicates. The Doctor was brought to UNIT HQ, commanded by Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart. The Doctor was uneasy about the Brigadier since their last meeting and was eager to reclaim his TARDIS key to escape the planet, but he realised that not only was his knowledge on how to operate the TARDIS blocked, but the dematerialisation codes had been changed.
With Dr. Elizabeth Shaw helping him, the Doctor created a device to stop the Autons. The Brigadier feared the Nestenes might return and asked for the Doctor's continued assistance. The Doctor agreed to join UNIT as their scientific advisor in exchange for facilities to repair the TARDIS and a car like the sporty antique roadster he had commandeered during the incident. Liz stayed on as his assistant. (DW: Spearhead from Space)
Liz Shaw and incidents on Earth
Summoned by the Brigadier to an underground research centre on Wenley Moor, the Doctor and Liz Shaw first met the Silurians. The Silurians had gone into hibernation millions of years ago but were revived by power from the research centre. The Doctor strove for peace between the reptiles and humans and even managed to gain the trust of the old Silurian leader. However a rebellious young Silurian seized power and released a deadly virus that threatened to wipe out humanity.
The Doctor found an antidote with Liz' help, but the Silurians retaliated by taking over the research centre. They planned to destroy the Van Allen Belt, a natural barrier shielding the Earth from solar radiation harmful to humans but beneficial to reptiles. The Silurians were forced to return to their caves when the Doctor overloaded the reactor, threatening to cause a nuclear explosion. The Brigadier, to the Doctor's disgust, had the Silurian base destroyed. (DW: Doctor Who and the Silurians)
The Doctor helped radiation-dependent alien ambassadors who had been kidnapped by the xenophobic retired astronaut, General Carrington. Carrington wanted to discredit the aliens and convince the world to wage war against them. The Doctor and UNIT thwarted his plans and arranged the exchange of ambassadors for astronauts. (DW: The Ambassadors of Death)
Liz's last regular work with the Doctor and UNIT occurred when UNIT was providing security at an experimental drilling project to penetrate the Earth's crust. The drill head started to leak an oily, green liquid that transformed those who touched it into vicious, primeval creatures who craved heat. The Doctor was accidentally transported by the partially-repaired TARDIS console into a parallel universe where the drilling project was at a more advanced stage and worked to save both universes. When the drilling site in the alternate universe was destroyed, it gave the Doctor information on the course the project would take, allowing him to save his own universe at the cost of the director of the operations becoming one of the creatures. (DW: Inferno)
Liz had extensive training, but it paled in comparison to the Doctor's own knowledge of the universe and scientific principles. She resigned from UNIT and returned to Cambridge. She reportedly told the Brigadier that all the Doctor really needed was "someone to pass him his test tubes and tell him how brilliant he was." This feeling probably contributed to her decision to return to her own research. (DW: Terror of the Autons)
The Master and travels with Jo
A renegade Time Lord known as the Master went to Luigi Rossini's circus and stole a dormant Nestene energy unit from a museum. He reactivated it with a radio telescope and took control of a small plastics firm where he produced deadly Auton dolls, chairs and daffodils. He schemed to destroy humanity and silence the Doctor forever with the Nestene. Aided by the Brigadier and his new companion, Jo Grant, the Doctor thwarted the Master's plans. (DW: Terror of the Autons)
The Doctor and Jo visited Stangmoor Prison for a demonstration of the Keller Machine, a device to extract negative emotions from hardened criminals. The Doctor discovered that the Master was behind the machine but had lost control of it. The machine was destroyed, but the Master escaped again. (DW: The Mind of Evil)
After the Master came to the Earth, the Time Lords allowed the Doctor limited use of his TARDIS. However it always returned him to 20th century Earth
when his missions were completed, turning him into "some sort of a galactic yo-yo." (DW: The Claws of Axos) When the Time Lords discovered the Master had stolen their secret file on the Doomsday Weapon, they sent the Doctor to retrieve it for them. Jo left the planet for the first time. They arrived on the planet Uxarieus and convinced the last native Uxariean to destroy the Weapon. (DW: Colony in Space)
The Doctor discovered that in Devil's End an old evil was asleep and tried to stop its awakening. The Master, posing as a rural vicar, summoned the last of the Dæmon's kind, Azal. Azal decided to give his power to the Master, and fired energy at the Doctor to kill him. Jo stepped in front of the Doctor, asking Azal to kill her instead. This act of self-sacrifice did not make sense to Azal, and the confusion destroyed him. The Master tried to escape in Bessie, but the Doctor's remote control brought the car back, and the Master was taken into custody. (DW: The Dæmons)
The Doctor found the Daleks again, after a long time thinking that they were dead. In a near future, a group of freedom fighters tried thwart a Dalek invasion by coming back in time to assassinate a delegate to the second World Peace Conference. It was thought the delegate had caused an explosion at the conference, starting a series of wars that had left humanity vulnerable to the Daleks. The Doctor realised that the explosion was caused by one of the fighters, Shura, in a misguided attempt to fulfil his mission. Daleks and Ogrons arrived in pursuit of the Doctor, but were destroyed when Shura detonated his bomb. (DW: Day of the Daleks)
Thinking he had fixed the TARDIS, the Doctor and Jo took it on a test flight but unexpectedly arrived on the planet Peladon. They entered the citadel of the soon-to-be-crowned King Peladon, where the Doctor was mistaken for a human dignitary summoned to act as Chairman of a committee assessing an application by the planet to join the Galactic Federation.
In fact a great conspiracy was occurring between a Federation delegate and the High Priest of Peladon. The Doctor and Jo revealed the conspiracy to the King. The traitors were condemned and relations between the Federation and the Peladon Kingdom were improved. (DW: The Curse of Peladon)
The Doctor and Jo visited the Master, now held in captivity on Fortress Island prison. (DW: The Dæmons) He claimed to have reformed but refused to reveal the location of his TARDIS. As they left, the governor, Colonel Trenchard, told them ships had been disappearing. The Doctor investigated. Jo and he were attacked by a Sea Devil while examining a fort.
The Doctor learned that the Master, assisted by a misguided Trenchard, was stealing electrical equipment from the naval base to build a machine to control the Sea Devils. The Master hoped to use the reptiles to conquer the world, and used the machine to summon some of them. The Doctor entered the Sea Devil's base and tried to encourage peaceful negotiation. Matters were left unresolved, however, when the base was destroyed with depth charges. The Sea Devils were defeated and the Master escaped his imprisonment. (DW: The Sea Devils)
The Doctor was summoned by the Time Lords to deliver an object to an unknown person in the 30th century, near the end of the Earth Empire. On the colony world of Solos, the human population was becoming hideous mutants. The Doctor, with the help of Professor Sondergaard, discovered the transformation was a natural part of the Solonian life cycle. A Solonian leader, Ky, eventually went into his metamorphosis and killed the Marshal of Solos, who had been committing genocide against the mutants. (DW: The Mutants)
The Doctor discovered that the Master, in the guise of Professor Thascalos, had constructed a device known as TOMTIT - Transmission Of Matter Through Interstitial Time. This device let him summon the Chronovore Kronos. It proved uncontrollable. The Doctor, Jo and the Master travelled to ancient Atlantis in search of a crystal to control Kronos. The Atlantians summoned Kronos with the crystal, resulting in the city's destruction. Kronos was set free and the Doctor and the Master escape the destruction. (DW: The Time Monster)
Freedom
A superluminal signal was sent to Earth, carrying with it an unusual energy blob that seemed intent on capturing the Doctor. On Gallifrey, the Time Lords broke the first law of time to bring the first and second incarnations of the Doctor to help the third. The first incarnation was trapped in a time eddy and, unable to fully materialise, could only communicate via the TARDIS scanner. The Second and Third Doctors found Omega behind the mysterious disappearances. They prevented him from reinserting himself into the world of matter from his anti-matter domain by blowing it up with a mix of regular matter and anti-matter. (DW: The Three Doctors)
final adventures with jo
The Doctor and Jo would up on the SS Bernice, a cargo ship crossing the Indian Ocean. A
monster appeared in the sea, events repeated themselves, and a giant hand stole the TARDIS. Investigation revealed that they were inside a Miniscope, an alien peepshow sporting numerous miniaturised environments, which showman Vorg and his assistant Shirna had brought to amuse the populace of the planet Inter Minor. After leaving the Miniscope, the Doctor returned the creatures home and destroyed the machine, allowing him to return to normal size. Hhe was nearly stopped in his attempts by a corrupt member of the Inter Minor government as they were paranoid about cleanliness. (DW: Carnival of Monsters)
Upon arriving on an Earth freighter the Doctor and Jo were caught up in the escalating tension between planets Earth and Draconia. They soon discovered that the Master was secretly working to provoke the two sides into all-out war under the orders of the Daleks. The Doctor, barely conscious, asked Jo to help him into the TARDIS. He sent a message to the Time Lords, asking them to pilot his TARDIS and follow the Daleks to their new base. (DW: Frontier in Space)
After he slipped into a coma, Jo explored the planet and met a guerrilla group of Thals. After the Doctor regained consciousness, they tried to stop the Daleks from gaining the invisibility of the native humanoid species. They discovered a base with more than ten thousand Daleks hibernating and buried the Daleks deep in the Earth, then left on the Supreme Dalek ship's . (DW: Planet of the Daleks)
After several attempts to get to Metebelis III the Doctor landed his TARDIS there. He was attacked by violent beings. While on the planet he took a certain blue crystal. Returning to Earth he joined the Brigadier and Jo at Llanfairfach, where UNIT was investigating a miner who had been found, turned green, in an abandoned coal pit. Global Chemicals was responsible for the pollution, having been directed by the computer BOSS. BOSS used mind control on key company staff and planned on controlling the world based on his initial programming. The Doctor broke BOSS's control using the blue crystal. Once freed, company boss Stevens destroyed BOSS before it could link with computers over the world. Jo and Cliff Jones, a scientist working at Wholeweal, announced they were getting engaged and planned to travel the Amazon looking for a rare fungus. The Doctor offered his blessing and gave Jo the blue crystal he had retrieved from Metebelis III as a wedding present. He then discreetly left to return to UNIT HQ. (DW: The Green Death)
early Adventures with Sarah Jane
Journalist Sarah Jane Smith impersonated her aunt, virologist Lavinia Smith, to gain access to a research centre. Top scientists were being held there in protective custody while UNIT investigated the disappearances of their colleagues.
The missing scientists had been kidnapped by a Sontaran, Linx, and taken to medieval England, where they were working under hypnosis to repair his crashed spaceship. Following Linx' death and the destruction of his weapons, the Doctor and Sarah began travelling together. (DW: The Time Warrior)
The Doctor and Sarah arrived in 1970s London to find that it had been evacuated because of dinosaurs. The dinosaurs were being brought to London by a time machine in a plan to revert London to a pre-technological level. The masterminds behind the scheme, Whitaker and Grover, were accidently transported to pre-historic Earth. (DW: Invasion of the Dinosaurs)
The TARDIS crashed on the planet Exxilon. The Doctor encountered Marine Space Corps members seeking Parrinium, a cure to a space-plague. The Daleks also landed for the same purpose. The Doctor and the Daleks discovered the Great City of the Exxilons, a large city with a power-disrupting tower preventing technology from functioning on the planet. The Doctor sought to disrupt its functions and remove the power-disrupting facility. Concurrently the Daleks ordered humans to place bombs around the City's central tower to destroy it. The City was destroyed, as was the Dalek space ship. The Doctor sadly commented that the universe was now down to six hundred ninety-nine wonders. (DW: Death to the Daleks)
The Doctor returned to Peladon fifty years after his last visit. Queen Thalira, daughter of the late King Peladon, sat on the throne. A labour dispute between Pel nobility and miners worsened when apparitions of their deity, Aggedor, attacked and killed several miners. The Galactic Federation desperately needed Trisilicate for its war against Galaxy 5, and sent in brutal Ice Warriors to ensure production. The Doctor brought the miners and ruling class together and they fought the Ice Warriors and rebuilt Peladon. (DW: The Monster of Peladon)
Guilt, redemption and regeneration
The Doctor continued to assist UNIT, though his presence on Earth was now more intermittent.
Mysterious goings-on at a meditation retreat run by Tibetan monks were linked to the blue planet Metebelis III and a colony of monstrous spiders. To defeat them, the Doctor sacrificed his life, exposing himself to lethal levels of radiation to destroy the web of the Spiders' leader, the Great One. With the help of his old mentor, K'anpo Rimpoche, he regenerated into his next incarnation, to the surprise of Sarah Jane and the annoyance of the Brigadier. (DW: Planet of the Spiders)
After regeneration
The fourth incarnation seemed to dislike his predecessor. He commented that his new nose was a definite improvement only hours after his regeneration. (DW: Robot) When on Karn, the fourth incarnation mentioned that he preferred his then-current form to "what he had last time". (DW: The Brain of Morbius)
- For a list of third Doctor stories in the order in which he experienced them, see Third Doctor - Timeline.
Legacy
The Third Doctor's time with UNIT had a lasting effect. Even though his following incarnations pretty much severed all ties with UNIT, the ninth and tenth incarnations worked with them a few times. None of the Doctor's later incarnations resigned the position. The Doctor was well known within UNIT even up to the late 2000s with its members wanting to meet him. Captain Erisa Magambo and Professor Malcolm Taylor were both excited to hear from him; Magambo saluted him, though it annoyed the Doctor. The two described the Doctor as the man everyone in UNIT wanted to meet but feared the day they would; they knew that that day would bring chaos. (DW: Planet of the Dead)
Unrecorded adventures
- Though sidetracked to the planet Nooma (MA: Speed of Flight), the Doctor, Jo and Mike Yates visited the planet Karfel and encountered the Borad and Katz's father there. (DW: Timelash)
- In Castrovalva, the fifth incarnation mentions being with the Brigadier and him chasing Ice Warriors, which must have been an unrecorded adventure for him.
- As the fifth Doctor was going through a rather unstable regeneration at that point however, the claim of having had an adventure with the Brigadier and chasing the Ice Warriors may not be entirely factual.
Psychological profile
Personality
The third incarnation often had problems with the Brigadier's tendency to think of situations in military terms, and with petty officials generally. Despite his conflict with the Master, he visited him in prison. Jo noticed that he worried about him; he told her that he was an old friend. (DW: The Sea Devils)
He attempted to achieve peace between the humanity and the Silurians; he again tried to come to an agreement with the Sea Devils, killing them when he saw no other hope. (DW: Doctor Who and the Silurians, The Sea Devils) While on a diplomatic mission, he fired upon Ogrons who boarded with the intention of taking him prisoner. (DW: Frontier in Space)
The third incarnation was a man of action, aggressively joining the fray whenever he could, unlike the first two incarnations who generally insinuated themselves into events discreetly. He was unafraid to pitch in with his physical skills, often bringing his mastery of Venusian aikido into play when the situation called for it. He had this knowledge of unarmed combat given to this regeneration without any training. (EDA: Placebo Effect)
Much like his predecessors, his keen mind was still his primary asset, and this was an incarnation who particularly loved to create and play with gadgets of all sorts. This passion displayed itself in terms of the third incarnation's scientific bent and in his love of vehicles, such as his yellow roadster, Bessie, and his car which he specially built. Sometime, his inventions did backfire on him, but he found ways to repair and improve them.
Staunchly moral, the Doctor was every bit the gentleman, a hero of the Victorian mould. (ST: A True Gentleman)
The Doctor had a noticeably antagonistic relationship with his second incarnation due to their vastly different personalities. Their relationship was so rocky that they were incapable of working together without the presence of the first incarnation. (DW: The Three Doctors, DW: The Five Doctors) In contrast, the fourth incarnation, although he never met himself in his previous incarnation, occasionally spoke rather fondly of that form.
His knowledge of the TARDIS greatly increased in this incarnation (chiefly due to taking it completely apart and reassembling it to try to to make it work). Once the Time Lords returned the knowledge of how to operate it, (DW: The Three Doctors) the Doctor was more adept at controlling his destinations then his previous incarnations, who often lacked any sort of control at all. (DW: An Unearthly Child) He denied any mistake on his part if he strayed, but would eventually find he had been off by outside means not to blame on the TARDIS navigation. (DW: Carnival of Monsters)
He was usually optimistic. He once declared a belief that life would always continue in some form. (DW: The Mutants)
Habits and Quirks
The third incarnation had a passion for gadgets, loved his vintage car, Bessie, and later, his specially designed futuristic car, almost as much as he loved his TARDIS. (DW: Doctor Who and the Silurians, Invasion of the Dinosaurs)
He would occasionally perform magic tricks. The third incarnation could at times by very tetchy and argumentative, an attitude that he demonstrated repeatedly with bureaucrats and other authority figures. Being a man of action, he used a wide variety of martial arts including Venusian aikido. He particularly enjoyed wine. (DW: Day of the Daleks) He also had a sort of catchphrase, this being, "If we reverse the polarity of..."
Also, it was a little known fact that the third incarnation had a particular preference for limes over lemons in his drinks.
Appearance
Being a man in the appearance of his fifties, the Third Doctor had white curly hair and a big pointy nose. He often smiled when amused, but hardly frowned. He was known for his ornate fashion sense, most famously his frilled shirt, velvet smoking jackets and inverness cape outfit. He also wore his frilled shirt with a bow tie or cravat, like the Eighth Doctor. Because of this, his first and second incarnations called him a dandy.
His was the first incarnation to steal clothes from a hospital, followed by his eighth and eleventh incarnations, respectively. (DW: Doctor Who, The Eleventh Hour)
Mysteries and discrepancies
- The newly regenerated Doctor sported a tattoo on one arm. (DW: Spearhead from Space) This was the mark made by the Time Lords to signify the Doctor was an exile. (NA: Christmas on a Rational Planet)
- The Doctor described himself as thousands of years old (DW: Doctor Who and the Silurians), which seems inconsistent with figures of his age given in later incarnations. He repeats that age later to Jo Grant. Previous incarnations of the Doctor gave his age to "some hundred years".
- See separate article.
Behind the scenes
- "Reverse the polarity of the neutron flow" is thought to be this incarnation's most commonly-used quote, but in fact he only says it fully, on television, in The Sea Devils and The Five Doctors. There are several other occasions, as in The Dæmons, where he mentions simply "reversing the polarity".
- Katy Manning has accepted responsibility for the third Doctor's increasingly-bouffant hairstyle. She claims that she teased Pertwee about a tiny bald spot on the back of his head until he became self-conscious about it. When she suggested he just put rollers in to make his hair "bigger" — and thereby cover the bald spot — he seized on the idea with alacrity. (DCOM: Planet of the Daleks)
- The tattoo this incarnation sports is left over from Pertwee's days in the military.
Casting
- Ron Moody was approached by the producers after his success in "Oliver" but he turned down the role. He has stated in interviews that turning down the role of the Third Doctor was the worst thing he ever did professionally; every time he hears the familiar Doctor Who theme tune he kicks himself.
External links
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